Camille Vasquez, attorney for Johnny Depp, lands TV role at NBC News
Vasquez made her debut as a legal analyst to discuss the Idaho College murders
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Your support makes all the difference.Camille Vasquez, who represented Johnny Depp in his defamation trial against Amber Heard, has landed a TV role at NBC News.
Last year, Vasquez was promoted to partner at her law firm Brown Rudnick after helping to secure a win for Depp in the actor’s highly publicised defamation trial against his ex-wife in Fairfax County, Virginia.
Over the seven weeks that court was in session, Vasquez became something of a celebrity among the Pirates of the Caribbean star’s fanbase.
As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, she has since inked a deal as a legal analyst for the news division of NBC.
Vasquez made her first appearance on the network on Monday morning (9 January) to discuss the Idaho college student murders.
Bryan Christopher Kohberger, a 27-year-old criminology PhD student at Washington State University, has been charged in the 13 November murders of four University of Idaho students: Ethan Chapin, 20, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Madison Mogen, 21.
According to the publication, at least three US news divisions had inquired about Vasquez’s “reception to an analyst or contributor role” before NBC News secured her position.
During her Monday (9 January) appearance, hosts asked Vasquez whether internet sleuths help or damage a murder case, to which she replied: “I think they can do both.”
Depp won his multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Heard after a jury ruled that her 2018 Washington Post article, titled “I spoke up against sexual violence – and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change”, was defamatory.
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Although the article did not mention Depp by name, his lawyers argued that it implied Depp physically and sexually abused Heard during their relationship.
Heard was ordered to pay Depp $10m (£8.2m) in compensatory damages and $5m (£4.1m) in punitive damages. The latter sum was reduced to $350,000 (£287,000) to comply with a statutory cap.
In December 2022, Heard announced that she had settled the defamation case.
The Aquaman star, 36, shared a post to her Instagram page calling the decision to settle with Depp “very difficult”, and something that had required “a great deal of deliberation”.
She said: “It’s important for me to say that I never chose this. I defended my truth and in doing so my life as I knew it was destroyed. The vilification I have faced on social media is an amplified version of the ways in which women are re-victimised when they come forward.”
In her statement, Heard said she had “lost faith” in the American legal system. The actor compared the 2022 US trial with the 2020 libel case that Depp lost in the UK over an article in The Sun that called him a “wife beater”.
“When I took before a judge in the UK, I was vindicated by a robust, impartial and fair system, where I was protected from having to give the worst moments of my testimony in front of the world’s media, and where the court found that I was subjected to domestic and sexual violence,” said Heard.
Last year, Vasquez said on ABC’s Good Morning America that it was “overwhelming” to have become an overnight social media star during Depp’s court case.
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic abuse, you can call the 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline, run by Refuge, on 0808 2000 247, or visit their website here.